In the prior art, large computer systems and large installations of a number of smaller computer systems and related peripheral equipment have suffered component and/or system failures caused by improper environmental operating conditions. Probably the most common of these failures is caused by excessive heat buildup in computer rooms and is caused by air conditioning system failure, or by improper air flow to some pieces of equipment. There exists little in the present art for minimizing failures caused by improper operating environment conditions except, for example, computer system operating personnel manually monitoring computer room temperatures and taking action when the temperature rises beyond an acceptable level. The effectiveness of such manual monitoring is limited because the system operating personnel are not always present in the computer room, particularly at times like weekends, and because some computer installations are remote and do not have system personnel on site every day. In addition, such manual temperature monitoring is also limited because a thermometer only reads the temperature at the spot at which it is mounted, and local "hot spots" inside of particular equipment cabinets are not detected before failure of the equipment inside cabinets. In addition, before a piece of equipment fails, excessive temperatures inside a cabinet caused by a "hot spot" cause a particular piece of equipment to operate as to introduce errors in the data output from the equipment, and from other equipment in the computer room that cooperate therewith.
Such computational problems and equipment failures caused by excessive temperatures are costly in terms of failed equipment that must be repaired or replaced, in terms of unreliable data output from the computer system, and in terms of computer system "down time". Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a computer system environment monitoring arrangement that can monitor different computer system environmental operating conditions at many points around and inside component parts of the computer system without constant human interaction. Such a monitoring arrangement should provide an output identifying what and where a potentially dangerous environmental operating conditions exist. This permits correction of problems before there is failure of equipment exposed to the excessive environmental operating condition, and minimizes errors caused by equipment subject to improper environmental operating conditions. In addition, there is a need in the art for a computer system environmental monitoring arrangement that can store data received from the outputs of a variety of sensors around and in a computer system. The stored data can be used to determine if rates of change of different environmental conditions are dangerous and need immediate attention. In addition, the stored data from the sensors can be used to create histograms showing trends in the operating environment of the computer room and in individual pieces of equipment therein.